It is well reported that long commutes have a large detrimental effect on people’s health and on the economy of cities. Interestingly, despite the strong impact on our daily lives, a simple way to measure the quality of urban transportation is still unknown. We performed data analysis on the transportation network of two large cities (Fortaleza and Dublin). By dividing each bus trajectory into equal pieces of space, we determine the distribution of time intervals for each trip, and we propose that the heterogeneity of the time distribution can be used to characterize the quality of that trip. Inspired by the use of the Gini coefficient to quantify the inequality level of income distribution, we used the Gini in order to characterize the heterogeneity level of the time distribution. We demonstrated that Gini coefficients are strongly correlated with peak usage of the mobility system, as well as the schedule delays in the system. Finally, our method can be used to find highly heterogeneous trips which have a large negative effect on the urban mobility and can help find new directions for new public planning strategies.

中文翻译：

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公共交通中的旅行异质性

众所周知，长途通勤对人们的健康和城市经济具有很大的不利影响。有趣的是，尽管它对我们的日常生活产生了很大的影响，但仍然没有一种简单的方法来测量城市交通的质量。我们对两个大城市（福塔莱萨和都柏林）的交通网络进行了数据分析。通过将每个公交车轨迹划分为相等的空间，我们确定每个行程的时间间隔的分布，并且我们建议时间分布的异质性可以用来表征该行程的质量。受基尼系数的使用来量化收入分配的不平等水平的启发，我们使用基尼来表征时间分布的异质性水平。我们证明了基尼系数与出行系统的峰值使用率以及系统中的计划延迟密切相关。最后，我们的方法可用于发现高度异类的出行，这些出行对城市交通产生很大的负面影响，并有助于为新的公共规划策略找到新的方向。